OUT YONDER: Awaiting next goat sandwich, margarita

BRADY — During a recent visit to my former hometown to deliver books to the Brady High School Library where most of my historical book collection is located, I made a quick tour through Richards Park, site of the 38th annual World Championship Barbecue Goat Cookoff. It brought back numerous memories of the past.

I was unable to stay for the event, but it has grown tremendously in size since I made the first one in 1974 that was organized by the Brady Jaycees to help them fund various projects. It quickly caught on among outdoor cooking enthusiasts, and the Jaycees turned over the sponsorship to the McCulloch County Chamber of Commerce.

The cooking teams competing this year totaled over 200 from all over the country. That first event drew several dozen teams.

The cooking and eating of goat was the main event. Judges, most from media organizations, selected the cooking team winners, which were awarded trophies. Among those early winners was a former hometown boy, Barney McBee, who spent his early years in Brady and later moved to Comanche, and Gary Cochran, a Dallas casket company representative who also grew up in the Heart of Texas. His mother served as the official weather observer there for many years, if memory serves me correctly.

Over the years, I spent many delightful times at the cook-off. It became an unofficial reunion location where former schoolmates, neighbors and others could renew friendships.

The contests were fun, too. Two of our special friends, Horace Barber and his wife, Lavonne, accompanied my wife and me to the event one year and had the time of their lives taking part in the wheelbarrow race.

Horace, then a stout oil field equipment representative, could have won that event, but wife Lavonne could not remember her left from her right in trying to give blindfolded Horace proper directions in circling the course. Although they came home without a trophy, the race remained in their memory for many years.

Another couple I fondly recall were champion tobacco spitters. Orville Wright Jr. of Menard and his wife, Sally, should have made the Guinness Book of Records. Both could put that spittle across the measurement line with little effort. "It's how you pucker your lips," Sally told me one time at another cook-off contest that featured the spitting event.

Since tobacco products are banned now from many locations because of health concerns, spitting contests are no longer held — in public, that is.

Dr. Richard W. Winters, a longtime veterinarian in Central Texas, had several unusual ways to cook goat. Rather than put it on a grill or in a smoker, he would wrap the carcass in burlap and bake it in a covered pit.

It was delicious, but the margaritas he carried around in a bucket to share with old friends seemed to be as popular as the smothered cabrito.

The cook-off is more professional now with arts and crafts vendors, live music, community dances and the like. However, I would have enjoyed sitting in the shade of a pecan tree having a chunk of goat meat wrapped in light bread and a margarita to wash it down. May the contest continue for years to come. I will plan to attend the 50th anniversary.

Thought for the week: All things are difficult before they become easy.

I'll be seeing you Out Yonder.

Ross McSwain can be contacted at yonder11@suddenlink.net or check his website www.rossmcswain.com.